bin2coff

As part of the ongoing effort to add 7z compression to libwdi, I am publishing bin2coff, which is an improved version of the tool of the same name by Vortex. bin2coff is aimed at generating MS COFF object files that are simple wrappers for binary data, and that can be used by the MS (Visual Studio, WDK), MinGW (MinGW32, MinGW-w64) and other linker tools. Such a tool can be especially useful if you want to generate a library that contains a large chunk binary data. For instance, and this is what I plan to use it for in libwdi, you can use it to embed a complete 7z archive in a cross-compiled Win32 static library file, which you will then be able to extract at runtime.

What this version of bin2coff brings is 64 bit compatibility (MinGW-w64), the provision of a size variable besides the binary data, as well as the full sourcecode. A 32 bit Windows executable is also included in the archive, which you can either download here (direct link) or here (SourceForge).

Usage: bin2coff bin obj [label] [64bit]

  bin  : source binary data
  obj  : target object file, in MS COFF format.
  label: identifier for the extern data. If not provided, the name of the
         binary file without extension is used.
  64bit: produce a 64 bit compatible object - symbols are generated without
         leading underscores and machine type is set to x86_x64.

With your linker set properly, typical access from a C source is:

    extern uint8_t  label[]     /* binary data         */
    extern uint32_t label_size  /* size of binary data */

Addon:
If, for some foolish reason, or just because you like it when things blow up in your face, you want to integrate bin2coff generation with libtool, you will find that you need to generate a .lo wrapper. In that case, the following Makefile excerpt might be of interest to you:

wdi_data.lo: bin2coff
# $* is the target without extension - here 'wdi_data'
 bin2coff $*.7z $*.o $(bin2coff_OPTIONS)
# libtool won't let us get away with a mere .o - we have to generate a .lo wrapper.
# What's more, the first comment from the .lo is mandatory and must contain the libtool version
 @echo "# Generated by $(shell $(LIBTOOL) --version | head -n 1)" > $@
 @echo "pic_object='$*.o'" >> $@
 @echo "non_pic_object='$*.o'" >> $@